The King of Staten Island is Simply 2 Hours and 18 Minutes of Pete Davidson's Life

At the age of 20, Pete Davidson pursued his dream of acting by joining the cast of Saturday Night Live. In the King of Staten Island however, Pete Davidson plays a fictional version of himself who is an aspiring tattoo artist. Despite this fictional spin, the film is almost entirely based off of Davidson growing up in Staten Island without his father. Davidson is known as Scott throughout the film, which is an homage to his father Scott, a firefighter who passed away on September 11th. In addition to this, he does include in the film his father's passing on September 11th. Knowing that the King of Staten Island is a comedy, it is interesting that Davidson included such a tragic event in such a funny film.

Including such a tragic loss would be hard for most actors to include in a movie's script, but for Davidson, it was "easy". This is most likely due to his famous lax demeanor. Also, including his father's passing led into a main topic of the film, his resentment toward the local firefighter in a relationship with his mother. Somehow, but not surprisingly, Davidson makes a comical movie about the most tragic experience one has in their life, the death of a friend/family member. One way Davidson created a comical film out of a heartbreaking loss was by "watering down" the event. What I mean by this is that Davidson included various extraordinarily funny scenes to sidetrack his audience into not focusing on the loss of Davidson's father. Another way Davidson sidetracked the audience was by only mentioning the loss of his father once or twice in the film. Overall, I found it very interesting that a comedy was somewhat based on tragedy.

Let me know what you thought of the King of Staten Island

RIP to Scott Davidson (January 4th 1968 - September 11th 2001)

-Seth Greenberg